[HN Gopher] Proposed Bill to Outlaw Bots from Scalping Online Go...
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Proposed Bill to Outlaw Bots from Scalping Online Goods [pdf]
Author : runnerup
Score : 42 points
Date : 2021-11-30 20:52 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tonko.house.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (tonko.house.gov)
| tacLog wrote:
| Side thought after reading this. Is there anyway to currently get
| a feed of high quality summarizations of laws passed by each
| congress? By that I mean, as a voting citizen I want to watch
| what congresses law/executive orders do. I don't want to read the
| laws, or how they work, or any of the details.
|
| I want the why, high level what does this change, and high level
| what was the opposition to this.
|
| I feel like one of the things that we struggle with is
| 'uninformed voters' in a modern democracy. I try to stay informed
| but I need to cut off my time somewhere. Are there any ways for
| me to stay lightly informed with low effort on my part?
| kovek wrote:
| If only we could use software to query the text of the bills.
| tacLog wrote:
| I can't tell if your joking or not, but wouldn't
| summarization at that level require some pretty insane AI?
| The closest I have seen is pretty decent and runs on some of
| the reddit news subreddits.
|
| But it is far from the work of a person skilled in real
| summarization, because real summarization requires you to
| predict what I care about based on the world at large.
| showerst wrote:
| I know a few people on the commercial side have
| experimented with automated summarization, but it never
| out-competes the summaries provided by hand by the
| Government, and any mistakes will get you ridiculed by
| customers. There's a bunch of downside for no real upside.
| mbreese wrote:
| It's not so much summarizing the text of bills, but having
| an API to query just the text of bills would be really
| nice. Even better would be some kind of diff/git blame log
| of changes. I would love to know who voted for which
| amendments, or how a particular bit of text got into a law.
|
| But, realistically, that would never happen as it's not
| information that I think people would be comfortable
| providing.
| showerst wrote:
| That's all available, fairly easily. At the federal level
| it's at congress.gov, including redlines for (some)
| amendments and versions. To be fair not every single
| amendment vote is available, but that's a quirk of how
| the legislative process works.
|
| At the federal level, the US has a great bulk api from
| GPO/FDSys, including full bill text in plain, pdf, and
| XML.
|
| At the state level Openstates.org does it, including with
| an API.
|
| A lot of us in the space have mess with various "git
| diff" type solutions, but unfortunately the way bill text
| changes doesn't lend itself to this.
| MarkSweep wrote:
| It's not exactly what are you asking for, but the Congressional
| Dish podcast attempts to cover bills and hearings.
|
| https://congressionaldish.com/
| tacLog wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation. That appears to be somewhat
| close to what I was hoping to find. I will check it out.
| showerst wrote:
| I co-founded a company in this space, although not focusing on
| summarization, and not targeted at normal citizens.
|
| > I want to watch what congresses law/executive orders do. I
| don't want to read the laws, or how they work, or any of the
| details.
|
| The real answer is "No you don't." Most congresses [1] pass a
| few hundred bills per year, and up to a thousand resolutions,
| and most of them are completely uninteresting to most people.
| On top of that, single bills can be omnibus monsters that touch
| 1000 subjects. That's not even touching executive orders (which
| are pretty minor), and regulations, which are not. There are
| usually a few hundred federal regulatory updates per week,
| which can be thousands of pages.
|
| Jokes about government gridlock aside, the US is very big and
| the government does a _lot_, it's just that we're to the point
| where most of it is tweaking very specialized things. It's so
| much noise that the best way to be an informed citizen is,
| unfortunately, to find a few news sites you like, because it
| takes a large team to surface the stuff of interest to the
| general public.
|
| At the risk of turning this into a news bashing political
| discussion, I think politico and thehill tend to have good
| content on congress, and are generally up front about political
| biases. A quick scan of those every other day will put you far
| ahead of most people.
|
| All that said, both congress.gov and openstates.org (for state
| level stuff) offer searching and alerting, and every federal
| bill that's going anywhere does get a nice summary, although
| they are fairly verbose. But realistically you need a
| gatekeeper to sift through the chaff, because there's just too
| much happening.
|
| [1] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics
| stevesearer wrote:
| More basic than summaries, in my city there is no way to easily
| view how an individual city council member voted any any
| particular motion before them. Or even to see a list of the
| things the council has voted on.
|
| In order to see this information you need to wade through big
| PDFs versions of the council meeting minutes to find the
| motions. They are also backlogged by over a year in creating
| and publishing the minutes.
| Animats wrote:
| Is there any real difference between a 'bot and a corporation? If
| you hired people to scalp items, would this bill allow that? If
| so, what's the point?
| wpietri wrote:
| Basically it's the same reason to outlaw robocalling
| specifically. The point is to raise costs to bad actors enough
| that some (and hopefully many) get out of the game.
| tacLog wrote:
| I think there is still a point. Lets think about this from a
| scalpers perspective.
|
| I want to make as much money as possible. I know there will
| always be a market for products people can't get on the
| traditional market. I can clearly identify these ahead of time
| and spend thousands buying them.
|
| If when I use automated bots to buy, my products then become
| illegal's aka 'slightly harder' to sell. That might reduce my
| income.
|
| If I then have to employ people to click the same buttons as
| normal people click using the same software normal people use,
| and not circumventing order limits or 1 per person rules. That
| means I can't get products as easily or cheaply and reduces my
| profit.
|
| I see two solutions to scalpers. Incentivize or require a
| demand based market. So that prices shoot way up on their own.
| (bad for many reasons) or cut into profit margins and restrict
| overall volume of the people that will create that demand based
| market legally or illegibly.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I could write up code in a day to take the place of a million
| humans, plenty of people could. That's the difference.
| 0des wrote:
| I sometimes watch 'drops' from a few brands, and it's jaw
| dropping how fast some of the items disappear, and I'd always
| wonder if there were bots that make organized efforts to buy
| these items for resale. Even things like keychains sell out in
| moments, and pop up in secondary markets almost as fast.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| yes there are bots just for this. brands like Nike and Supreme
| have big problems with this. Some arent even bots they are just
| people with a browser open, hoping to buying to resell/flip.
|
| its made easier by the fact that so many websites use the same
| ecommerce platforms which makes one bot work across thousands
| of sites.
| woah wrote:
| This is a good first step, but ultimately it's nothing but a
| band-aid.
|
| We need to make it illegal for toy manufacturers to negligently
| mis-plan for the holidays, leaving millions of children
| disappointed.
|
| If it is found that a toy manufacturer could have produced more
| stock, but failed to, through malice or incompetence, they should
| be fined at the very least.
| savant_penguin wrote:
| This sounds extremely dystopian
|
| A simple underproduction (due to waste/risk avoidance or mere
| strategy) would create more litigation.
|
| Which companies do you think can afford this kind of
| regulation? The mom and pop shop or Walmart?
|
| Even if you ignore all of that, failure to sell _enough_ sounds
| like a bizarre reason for a fine and would push the moral
| expectations of the law everyone has (murder, theft, violence
| except in self defense) even farther from the actual law of the
| land. To give you one example of such type of law, look at the
| subsidies the US taxpayers provide to billionaire sugar
| producers. You could easily argue that one of the most diabetic
| countries on the planet should not subsidize sugar, yet it
| still happens. These types of action lead me (and I expect
| others) to have a much lower respect for authority and the law
| fhood wrote:
| I can't think of too many downsides to making bot scalping
| illegal, making it illegal to misunderstand demand seems more
| fraught......unless this is sarcasm.
| mdasen wrote:
| The thing I never really understand about scalping is why the
| original retailer/supplier wouldn't simply raise their prices. If
| graphics cards are consistently out of stock, why not simply
| raise prices? We're seeing that with cars as many dealerships
| raise prices on their inventory rather than letting people buy
| them at MSRP and then re-sell them for a profit.
|
| If you're selling the items, why would you want to give that
| profit to scalpers? Is the issue that the seller doesn't know
| that demand so far exceeds supply?
|
| With something like Tickle Me Elmo, one could assume that they
| didn't know in advance, but could have quickly changed the price
| from $20 to $80 and dampened demand as the season went on.
|
| Could sites potentially predict demand by having some pre-
| registration for product sales and then predict the price better
| based on that? For products that are going to "drop", it could be
| beneficial to consumers (at least ones that have money) and
| sellers to have that. As one collects data, one could start
| predicting what price would leave you without too many scalpers
| based on pre-registration numbers.
|
| Maybe the issue is that many things might be more winner-take-
| most or winner-take-momentum/word-of-mouth/hype markets. If
| everyone saw Tickle Me Elmo at $80, some other toy would get all
| the hype as the hot-item of the year and they wouldn't sell any.
| Still, for something like graphics cards, that seems less likely
| to be the case. People don't buy graphics cards because it's a
| hot item. They buy them for practical purposes. I guess one could
| argue that if certain crypto markets saw graphics cards as having
| higher prices long-term, they might try and migrate off graphics
| cards which could lower the demand long-term, but it seems like
| graphics card companies are more interested in serving gamers.
|
| It's just always seemed odd that sellers would allow people to
| arbitrage their pricing like that - especially on known hot
| items.
| [deleted]
| kube-system wrote:
| People tend to shoot the messenger when market forces are not
| in their favor. Any more profit that a retailer gets from
| raising prices on this tiny part of their inventory could get
| them more than that amount of flak for raising their own
| prices. I think many retailers are happy moving 100% of their
| product at normal margins while letting scalpers take all the
| flak for price increases. Graphics cards are just one item of
| many on the shelf for most retailers.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Didn't Nvidia attempt to burn silicon that would disallow
| crypto mining? That doesn't sound like they're happy to be
| cleared out of inventory, but would rather cater to a
| specific demo that is more price sensitive.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The problem with just raising MSRP is that their pricing is far
| too transparent to do that. The brand damage caused by getting
| ahead of scalpers would be higher than the consumer surplus
| taken. Not to mention that, for at least some classes of goods,
| raising prices in response to demand is considered gouging and
| prohibited by law. Furthermore, for at least some of these
| goods[0], using a market-clearing price would actively harm
| other business goals.
|
| In the example of game consoles, Sony and Microsoft aren't
| trying to sell you a PS5 or Xbox Series X because it makes them
| money. In fact, they take a loss on them even in "normal"
| market conditions. The point of the console is to lock you into
| a software ecosystem that they can charge developers a 30% tax
| in order to access.
|
| Most of the money made from selling graphics cards is _not_ by
| selling individual cards in retail packaging. The DIY and
| upgrade card markets are actually quite small. Most of the
| money comes from OEM design wins, system-integrator sales, and
| so on - markets in which the consumer is buying a fully-
| functional computer rather than parts.
|
| What seems to have ultimately happened is that companies have
| used the introduction of new products to set new, higher
| prices. For example, Apple's 2021 product launches have
| consistently increased pricing over their replacements from
| prior years.
|
| [0] notably game consoles, though merchandise like the Tickle
| Me Elmo would also qualify
| nybble41 wrote:
| > In the example of game consoles, Sony and Microsoft aren't
| trying to sell you a PS5 or Xbox Series X because it makes
| them money. In fact, they take a loss on them even in
| "normal" market conditions. The point of the console is to
| lock you into a software ecosystem that they can charge
| developers a 30% tax in order to access.
|
| This is a good argument for producing more consoles, but if
| there isn't enough supply to clear demand then getting more
| of the limited stock of consoles into the hands of consumers
| with _less_ money to spend on gaming is not likely to
| increase overall spending on the related software.
| deltree7 wrote:
| There is also Customer Lifetime Value.
|
| By raising prices, you may lose some of your customers, who
| unfairly penalizes the retail/manufacturer especially when
| politicians (and reddit and HN) happily side with sub-optimal
| fixed price solutions.
|
| Pitchforking is real and very dangerous in the modern era.
|
| So, retail / manufacturer have to let true marketplace like
| scalpers to provide the needed correction (albeit
| inefficiently).
| notahacker wrote:
| The correction isn't "needed"; the same inventory gets sold
| to the same number of consumers, the scalpers just take a bit
| more money from front running them, reducing the net benefit
| of owning of the final product. And Nintendo is more worried
| about ensuring there's a healthy market for games than
| "pitchforking" when it sets its RRP. Scalpers mean they sell
| less.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I think you are missing the risk. The supplier could raise
| prices but there comes a point when demand slows and now the
| retailer is stuck with inventory. If every one else is selling
| below MSRP and you are selling for double, you won't get
| business until everyone else is sold out. Most retailers and
| wholesalers want a certain amount of basis points. They simply
| want to sell everything for X% more than they paid. They don't
| want to be in the speculation game. Graphics cards is mostly a
| function of re-purposing the supply for something it wasn't
| really intended for. Look back at beanie babies when they were
| a craze. As a retailer, you wouldn't want to get stuck with
| inventory you couldn't even move at a loss. I do agree that
| they could be a little more aggressive with selling at MSRP if
| demand is high and drop back to "sale" prices if demand slows.
| I think there are probably some legal things for some products
| that you can't sell for over MSVP or for less than some minimum
| advertised price. Additionally, some of these products can be
| seen as "loss leaders" in the sense that they become a trusted
| source for "good deals".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| In the case of a band, openly pricing out a bunch of your loyal
| fans isn't a great idea.
| hattmall wrote:
| Manufacturer sells to distributor who sells to retail. Retail
| is constrained by pricing agreements. They can't sell at a
| higher price because the manufacturer directs the retail price.
| Scalpers are really just improving market place efficiency, but
| manufacturers know that demand is variable so they don't want
| to strictly limit products to the wealthiest consumers because
| there is plenty of data that doing so slows wider adoption.
| It's all about marketing and we know that right now
| affordability and limited quantity is an ideal mix.
| Croftengea wrote:
| > They can't sell at a higher price because the manufacturer
| directs the retail price.
|
| Maybe this is the case in the US but definitely not in the
| EU.
| acomjean wrote:
| I thinks some retailer don't want to irritate they're
| customers. Microcenter has signs all over the store indicating
| one video card per customer per month. They want to sell the
| other components.
|
| I'm always surprised that online sellers don't just set up a
| queue for people who wanted to buy. (thank you steam and steam
| deck)
|
| Best Buy is allocating PS5s to people in their Best Buy Club...
| which of course is $200/yr.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/best-buy-offers-exclu...
| Shadonototra wrote:
| what about a bill to not be able to sell something over MSRP
|
| outlawing bots IS IMPOSSIBLE, you can spit what ever text
| article, it won't stop someone from automating things even more
|
| the only that that's gonna do is make them even harder to detect
| ;)
|
| bots creators don't burn all their cards whey they do automation
| _boffin_ wrote:
| The "S" in MSRP is "Suggested"... maybe you'd like "MRRP" or
| Manufacture Required Retail Price, which some places do have
| contractual obligations for.
| threatofrain wrote:
| > Prohibits manipulative work arounds that allow bad actors to
| use bots to circumvent control measures designed to protect real
| consumers
|
| > Makes it illegal to knowingly circumvent a security measure,
| access control system, or other technological control or measure
| on an Internet website or online service to maintain the
| integrity of posted online purchasing order rules for products or
| services, including toys, and would make it illegal to sell or
| offer to sell any product or service obtained in this manner
|
| Would this stop consumer products which track prices?
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| This is a great idea in concept, but sadly I don't think it'll
| ever work. Most etailers spend good money trying to prevent these
| type of bots. There are dozens of players in the anti-bot space.
| Unfortunately it doesn't stop the most dedicated attackers. And
| this is a cat and mouse game that can evolve at the speed of
| technology. A game that evolves at the speed of law will be out
| of date before it's even made it out of the draft stage.
|
| Even if a law is written so well that there isn't a single
| loophole (which will never happen)... all the scalpers need to do
| is operate in a different country. Between botnets, proxies, re-
| shippers and other middle-men groups... you aren't going to stop
| it through the law.
| fhood wrote:
| It might not work well for digital goods, but physical ones are
| much easier to control.
|
| Edit: and even for digital goods, it would force people away
| from the most convenient storefronts.
| riffic wrote:
| not a lawyer but I have a feeling there are constitutional
| hurdles here to consider.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Such as?
|
| The Commerce Clause has been interpreted _extremely_ loosely in
| recent decades. If you can ban medical marijuana because it
| _might_ travel across state lines
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich), you can ban
| scalping on similar grounds.
| darepublic wrote:
| I'd hope using a personal bot to buy online goods (ie for
| convenience) is still lawful
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| It's amazing how many places these bots show up where you
| wouldn't expect. Here in Vancouver, they've been used for
| grabbing campsites at the provincial parks.
| tyingq wrote:
| Yeah. They are especially bad around things where you can hold
| inventory with no penalty for canceling later. Which ends up in
| a lot of _" Why can't we have nice things?"_ rules later.
| lghh wrote:
| Scalping is just meeting an ineffeciency in supply and demand. I
| don't know why we feel the need to regulate one of the basic
| principles of a market.
|
| If you truly want to stop scalping, you should become more
| comfortable with dramatically increased MSRP and remove
| competitive moats around certain products. Nintendo should be
| able to sell the NES Classic for 13k if they want. I should be
| able to produce my own home-console that plays 20 year old games
| if I want. Those are the actual solutions to scalping.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| As is so often the case, your "is just" papers over a lot of
| detail. When a firm sells a good for less than the bid price of
| the buyer, the marginal value captured by that bidder is called
| consumer surplus. Firms do this for many reasons: they don't
| want the reputational hit of running an auction, they don't
| consider it worth the effort, they don't anticipate a need
| until after the revealed demand of the market is shown, and by
| that time it's too late to build an apparatus. Probably others
| I'm not thinking of.
|
| Scalpers capture this marginal value and in exchange provide
| the "service" of reallocating some of the goods to the buyers
| with the highest bid prices. (I put scare quotes around service
| here because I'm sure many consider it a pessimization.)
|
| If you're a wealthy person, scalpers may actually be good for
| you, because you don't have to compete with poorer people who
| have more time to refresh a webpage. You can just buy the good
| on eBay. On the other hand, it seems totally valid for the
| government to decide that it is in the best interests of the
| people that the consumer surplus in the system devolve to
| actual consumers.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| If someone like Shopify introduced an auction system that can
| be turned on/off from the click if a button, or automatically
| when inventory goes out too fast, that'd probably help a lot
| of online stores.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Scalping is usually a short-term monopoly based in a temporary
| shortage, and it has the same problems (arrogation of consumer
| surplus and deadweight loss).
|
| > Nintendo should be able to sell the NES Classic for 13k
|
| That's a somewhat different issue, it's what happens as the
| result of a legally sanctioned monopoly (copyright) that has
| been exploited far beyond any reasonable term. It's still a
| monopoly and it's still bad.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I agree with you that scalping is a symptom of market
| inefficiency. But I think it occurs mostly when there are
| further considerations taken into account, e.g. public image
| and reputation.
|
| For instance everyone knows, including organisers, that some
| people would be willing to pay large sums for tickets to
| premium events (concerts, sport, etc) but selling tickets at
| such price would lead to a public outcry.
|
| We saw the reactions to Uber's surge pricing as well.
|
| It may also be a brand strategy to let products sell out and be
| reported as being resold at huge prices. It creates a buzz and
| scarcity that may increase demand further.
| WheatM wrote:
| Such a predictable hackernewsbro libertarian response. Scalping
| hurts markets and only benefits rent-taking middlemen who
| provide no value. There is no liquidity issue to resolve, and
| scalper is a negative feedback loop that hurt avaialability.
| You're right that suppliers could simply jack up prices to fill
| the supply/demand gap, but there's a reason they don't do this:
| supply crunches are temporary. What do you think it would do to
| MS or Sony branding and reputation if they temporarily jacked
| up prices to meet this gap in the short term?
| blowski wrote:
| There's a risk that scalpers establish a short-term monopoly
| over a market.
|
| For example, say scalpers buy all of a particular model of
| remote control car - they can now dictate the selling price,
| without adding any value to the market. But of course, the
| opposite argument is that people will then buy competing remote
| control cars and the scalpers will have to reduce their prices.
| Thus they are merely being entrepreneurial and finding an
| opportunity for arbitrage.
|
| This is one of those timeless debates with no answers. I'm sure
| Ancient Egypt had scalpers, and people wanted to ban them.
| fhood wrote:
| What do you mean? Nintendo could sell the NES Classic for 13k
| if they wanted to, but nobody would buy it. Companies choose
| their pricing very carefully, and there are a whole lot more
| factors than max value on secondary market that go into it.
| Nvidia is well aware they aren't going to be able to keep up
| with demand, but if they raise their prices too much people
| will consider the cards poor value and won't purchase them.
| Think mac pro wheels. Scalpers operate on a different playing
| field, and are really just parasitic.
| runnerup wrote:
| Indeed. This is especially important because if, say, TSMC or
| Nvidia increase their MSRP's, then they go go re-invest that
| into additional capacity to solve the supply shortage. Instead,
| middlemen take the markup profits and have no ability to put
| that towards additional production.
|
| I do wonder if it's a bit of an backdoor anti-inflation deal
| thing:
|
| - TSMC/Nvidia boards don't want to raise prices because it
| might cause rank-and-file consumers to feel like inflation is
| higher, and there's perhaps fear it could lead to a cycle of
| increasing across-the-board inflation on wide basket of goods.
|
| - USA/etc offers TSMC/etc subsidies for building additional
| capacity to make up for the revenue/reinvestment shortfall on
| keeping artificially low MSRP's.
|
| And then this is a ham-handed attempt to exert some limit on
| any scalping operation getting "too large" and potentially
| drive consumer prices down a bit more until the additional
| capacity (funded by govt. subsidies instead of MSRP) finally
| comes online.
|
| Is that hypothesis/"mad ramblings" completely unreasonable? It
| might be. I just really feel that the producers should increase
| prices and reinvest in capacity, rather than allow middlemen to
| skim the arbitrage.
| nradov wrote:
| Chip manufacturers can't increase capacity any faster due to
| supply chain constraints. Raising prices wouldn't allow them
| to expand any faster. And most of their prices are locked in
| by long term production contracts anyway.
| rektide wrote:
| This pure economist point of view feels so unwelcome &
| reductionist. That the market isn't taking every ounce of
| profit being viewed as inefficiency, this idea that prices must
| be as high as possible seems like a diseased view to me.
|
| Consumers should have access to things like GPUs at a rate the
| manufacturer is happy to charge. There's a net benefit to
| society when supply isn't maximally constrained & exploited.
| Recently, folks are wondering whether PC gaming is going to be
| able to survive, when even shitty ass lower-mid range graphics
| cards cost as much as a console. That would be horrificly sad
| for computing.
| avalys wrote:
| > Consumers should have access to things like GPUs at a rate
| the manufacturer is happy to charge.
|
| Okay, great, so you ban scalping bots. Now consumers can't
| buy GPUs because they're sold out, as opposed to because
| they're too expensive. (1)
|
| The problem is that the supply of GPUs is constrained and
| there are more consumers who want GPUs than there are GPUs to
| sell them. Banning scalping bots is not going to solve that
| problem.
|
| (1) Of course people can still resell for a profit on eBay,
| unless you decide to ban that too. Heck, why not just ban
| everything you don't like? Let's pass a law to ban poverty
| while we're at it.
|
| ---
|
| All that said, the act actually doesn't ban bots, it bans
| bots which circumvent protections that the seller put in
| place to block them. Which is fine by me, if a seller wants
| to put in a place a policy that says they will not sell to
| bots, I think it is fine for the government to help them
| enforce that policy.
| notahacker wrote:
| > Okay, great, so you ban scalping bots. Now consumers
| can't buy GPUs because they're sold out, as opposed to
| because they're too expensive.
|
| Scalping bots don't increase the supply of GPUs. In the
| scalper's absemce no more people than before will be unable
| to buy GPUs because of the shortage, it's just those that
| do manage to buy them will tend to get them earlier at a
| cheaper price.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > it's just those that do manage to buy them will tend to
| get them earlier at a cheaper price
|
| That's the problem. It means they go to people who may
| not have been willing to pay what they were actually
| worth, while others who _were_ willing to pay are unable
| to buy them because there aren 't any left to sell.
| heyitsguay wrote:
| What you're describing as a "problem" is people beyond
| the wealthiest members of society having a chance at
| owning popular consumer goods, while the wealthy must
| contend with an X% chance at getting them on demand
| instead of 100%.
| heyitsguay wrote:
| Seriously. If you ever meet any of these people in real life,
| take their car keys and remind them the market dictates the
| price of all goods and the police are a statist intervention.
| nojito wrote:
| Scalping increases MSRP. Removing it would cause it to
| decrease.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| The only reason scaplers exist is because people are willing
| to pay a higher price than what the scalper pays for the
| good. The fact that people are willing to pay the higher
| price shows it was priced too low.
| tyingq wrote:
| Sometimes based on artificial scarcity created by a
| scalper. People are sometimes paying for a status symbol
| and wouldn't have purchased the item otherwise. Meaning
| their interest was only piqued after the item was hoarded.
| wpietri wrote:
| It does not show that at all.
|
| Taking Nintendo as mentioned above, they have plenty of
| reason to aim for a stable, low price. The economics of
| their business are different than somebody, say, selling
| their labor by the hour. If they maximize per-console
| profit, they end up screwing themselves by creating a
| platform without many users, which is then unattractive to
| both game-makers and game-purchasers.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Generally, price gouging is frowned upon by society and
| detrimental to a healthy market.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| All it shows is that price discrimination is needed, not
| that the price is too low. Indeed, raising the price may
| net reduce revenues if they've already priced the MSRP
| optimally on the price demand curve.
|
| The only solution here would be to have an MSRP that's
| dependent on your net worth but that's seen as undesirable
| so instead we get 2 price points: scalpers and normal
| channels. So rather than the manufacturer or consumer
| seeing the benefit of price discrimination, the scalper,
| who's essentially rent seeking, gets to arbitrage that
| opportunity.
|
| Either ban resale for more than retail or let manufacturers
| alter their prices based on your price sensitivity.
| notahacker wrote:
| This assumes the only purpose of selling is to maximise
| short term yield on that particular item.
|
| One of the reasons ticket scalpers associated with events
| are particularly despised is that the promoters of the
| event would much rather the event was affordable and full
| than expensive but half empty, which might be the capacity
| which yields the most ticket revenue.
| [deleted]
| cgb223 wrote:
| If bots are hosted in China (or any non-US country), and purchase
| products to be delivered to China does this law prevent any
| scalping of product at all in that case?
|
| If so, how is it enforced?
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I wondered the same - I mean, we've all seen the effectiveness
| of anti-robocall legislation. All folks will really have to do
| is avoid using the bot inside the US.
|
| It will just wind up being a bill to show that "we have done
| things! We passed the bill!"
| kube-system wrote:
| Many of the US big box sites where bots are a problem don't
| ship to China... or even Canada.
| tyingq wrote:
| I would guess the shipping costs would keep a lot of that
| (though not all of it) in line. It did used to be a big issue
| when the UPU subsidized shipping from China, but that's gone
| now.
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